Poland Weighs the Risks of Peacekeeping

Published 8:00 pm, Wednesday, July 2, 2003

Associated Press Writer

Poland sent some 250 soldiers to Iraq to help set up a Polish-commanded postwar zone, embarking on a risky mission that will test the country's role as a U.S. military ally.

Prime Minister Leszek Miller attended a tearful farewell ceremony Wednesday for the logistics unit and a group of officers, who will help prepare the ground for a desert mission expected to involve more than 9,000 troops from at least 15 nations.

"The Polish army today begins its most important operation since World War II," Miller said before the soldiers boarded two U.S. planes taking them to the region.

With American casualties in Iraq mounting, Polish leaders anxious to preserve public support for the mission insisted that their soldiers are well-prepared.

Gen. Czeslaw Piatas, the Polish army chief of staff, acknowledged that the role would require major organizational skills from Poland, a former Soviet bloc nation that joined NATO only in 1999 and has pushed to modernize its armed forces.

"But our officers have such skills," Piatas said in Warsaw, the capital.

The United States invited Poland to run one of the three sectors in Iraq, a central part wedged between U.S. and British zones, after Warsaw strongly backed Washington's hard line on terrorism and contributed some 200 troops to the military campaign to oust Saddam Hussein.

Poland, Spain and Ukraine will each lead a brigade in the sector, under overall Polish command. Poland already has a military advance team and members of an elite commando unit in the region, where the full international force is expected to be in place by mid-August.

NATO and the U.S. military have promised to support the effort with communications, intelligence and vehicles _ and Poland is looking to Washington and other allies to foot the bulk of the bill, estimated at more than $90 million for a year.

Yet the mission's risks have stirred little debate in Poland, where pride about the nation's new international responsibilities plays a strong role, and the deployment has broad support among the usually squabbling political parties.

Poland's ambassador to NATO expressed concern that the public mood could shift once Polish troops start suffering casualties.

"For the time being, everything is going according to plan," Jerzy Maria Nowak told The Associated Press by telephone from Brussels, Belgium. "But if somebody gets killed, the atmosphere will be different."

Poland is counting in part on long experience in peacekeeping, including the Balkans since the 1990s, where Poles have served alongside U.S. troops. The units being sent to Iraq all have peacekeeping backgrounds, officials said.

Capt. Grzegorz Studzinski's wife said she was afraid for his life as he prepared to board Wednesday's flight.

"It was our common decision, which we took in March when it was not so dangerous there" said Joanna Studzinska, 28, who came to the airport with the couple's 4 1/2-year-old son.

"We thought it would be a peace mission _ that he would go to help, not to fight," she said. "Now I know he is going to war. It feels awful."

For many Polish soldiers, though, the extra pay is worth the risk. Chief Warrant Officer Adam Hajkowicz, 35, said his soldier's pay in Iraq will be $1,200, compared to the equivalent of $490 in Poland.

In central Iraq, Poland will contribute 2,300 soldiers to a brigade that also includes units from Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Lithuania. A second brigade will have 1,640 Ukrainians and the third 1,100 Spanish troops and units from Honduras, the Dominican Republic and El Salvador and Nicaragua.